


Lean On

by lettersfromnowhere



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, But It All Ends Well!, F/M, Whump-ish, tonal whiplash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26184295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: Katara isn't about to let Zuko neglect his well-being. Zuko isn't about to accept help. This is fine...right?
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 197





	Lean On

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a mess. 
> 
> Nevertheless, please enjoy.

  
“Were you just…not going to tell me that you were _dying?”_

Zuko crosses his arms, though he’s so exhausted that the effect is weak. “I’m not dying, Katara.”

“Um. Have you _seen_ yourself lately? You’ve already got one foot in death’s door!”

(Later, Zuko asks one of his servants to fetch a mirror, and, recoiling at his pale, sallow complexion, dark-rimmed eyes, and sunken features, he sees why Katara was so shocked. But he’s perfectly unaware of the figure he cuts now and he takes offense at that.)

“I just haven’t been sleeping well,” he lies. “Look, Katara, I don’t know who told you I was dying, but-“

“I don’t buy it.” Now Katara’s eyes soften and, for the first time since she’d thrown open his bedroom door a few moments earlier, she steps past the doorway. As she takes a seat on the edge of the bed, she can’t help but cluck disapprovingly and smooth a hand through his matted hair, shaking her head. “You’re a mess, Zuko. You have to take care of yourself.”

“I _am-“_

The way she glares at him tells Zuko that it would be futile to bother trying to finish that sentence.

“It was your uncle, by the way,” Katara points out, absentmindedly shifting the pillows behind him; he sits up to allow her easier access and she pushes his shoulders back down, stopping after he winces and looking at him askance. “He wrote me after his last visit, saying you weren’t taking care of yourself or…doing too well with the stress and all. That your health wasn’t great.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t think it was going to be anything too serious, though.”

“Of course he did,” Zuko sighs. “You didn’t have to come. It’s not like I’m dying.”

She glares at him now. “If I’d known you were such a disaster, I’d have come earlier.”

“I told you, Katara, I’m _fine.”_

“You can barely sit up, Zuko.” She presses the back of her hand to his forehead. “And you’re burning up.”

“I’m a Firebender. We run warm.”

“I know what Firebender warmth feels like.” Katara looks at him as if he’s supposed to know what that implies; he doesn’t. “But I also know what a fever feels like. This is definitely a fever.”

“Okay, so I have a fever.” He might as well come clean – she already knows and she’s only going to become more determined to convince him if he doesn’t admit it. “But a fever doesn’t warrant you putting your whole life on hold to come here” – he looks at her pointedly – “ _unannounced.”_

“Oh, shush. You know you’ve missed me,” Katara mutters under her breath, her face a little more flushed than it was a second ago.

“Well, of course I have, but you also have a life in the South Pole-“

“True, but it’s nice to get out once in a while, too. I got so used to traveling that I miss it sometimes.”

“Oh, so this is a vacation?” Part of Zuko wants to smirk, but he doesn’t think she would take that very well.

“No, I’m here to save you from your careless ways,” Katara teases. Then her face grows serious again. “But…is this really just the stress? It looked like it hurt you to sit up. That can’t just be because you have a run-of-the-mill fever.”

Zuko swallows hard. _Of course she noticed._ “No, I guess I’m just feeling fatigued.”

Katara knows he’s lying before he even opens his mouth and her arms are crossed again. “Is your scar acting up?”

“Um…no, it’s fine,” he says, gesturing vaguely to the left side of his face.

  
(Zuko knows that isn’t what she’s asking – he’s desperate here. Why, he can’t say, but he’s decided to dig in his heels, so now there is _no way_ he’s giving in.)

“Wrong scar, Zuko,” Katara says drily, unceremoniously pushing the collar of his wraparound tunic open. Her face is as hot as his own, but its expression is as businesslike as ever as her hands work the fabric aside. Embarrassed without really knowing why (it isn’t as if she’s never seen him shirtless before), he undoes the tie that keeps the tunic closed, if only to stop her from doing it herself.

Katara’s eyes darken when she finally gets a good look at the star-shaped welt on his chest, because the skin should be tough and featureless now but it’s _not._ He and she both know that it hasn’t healed right.

“Um.” Zuko’s not sure what to say, but he feels like he should say _something._ “That’s…that’s what it looks like, I guess.”

“Have you been keeping this clean?” she asks.

“Um…”

“I know you haven’t, Zuko.” Now there’s more than disapproval in her eyes – it’s fury and fear and their sapphire color is the raging deep blue of a storm-beset sea. “It’s not even _dressed,_ Zuko. _I told you to keep it dressed._ I told every single palace physician to _make_ you keep it dressed. So _why is it not dressed?_ ”

“Well, uh, you see-“

“What I _see_ is that your wound is infected again and you’re not even doing anything about it.” Katara’s voice is gentler now, and the fury has ebbed away and left only fear behind. “And I know you haven’t been rested. It’s got to hurt, and now it’s making you sick…”

“I know, Katara.” He wishes he could hug her, because she looks miserable at the very idea of him neglecting his health, but he feels, oddly, as if it would only make matters worse. “It’s just…there’s so much that has to get done. I can’t _afford_ to rest.”

“You _have_ to, Zuko.” Katara switches tactics. “Think about it practically. Who’s going to fix all these problems if the Fire Lord works himself into an early grave?”

“I’m not going to die, Katara.”

“You already have a weak heart” – Zuko doesn’t miss the guilt that flashes across Katara’s face when she mentions that, hand still pressed to his scar – “and you’re not helping that by being so stressed that you don’t eat or sleep, not to _mention_ letting the wound get infected. You can’t afford to neglect your health! What is it going to take to make you realize that?”

“Is that why you’re here?” he changes the subject, hoping it’ll diffuse the situation. “To make sure I take care of myself?”

“I’ve been worried about you. It’s taken me a few months to fit it into my schedule, but I needed to come check up on you.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“Do you want me to leave?” her tone tries to be challenging but there’s unmistakable hurt in it, too, and his heart clenches. _No, I don’t. Not at all._

“Of course not,” he says weakly. “Even if you did show up announced to nag me about getting more sleep.”

Humming to herself for no apparent reason, Katara bends water from the waterskin at her hip and passes it over his still-bare chest, pressing the water against the contours of his burnt skin. She knows she doesn’t need to ask; grumpy as he may be at her intervention, he trusts her with his life. And it _is_ a relief – he sighs contentedly at the cool comfort of water against his fever-flushed skin. “I didn’t just come because of that, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Everything is harder alone,” she says vaguely. “I think you’d be better off with someone around to care about you.”

Once again, he finds himself touched by her easy generosity. “You don’t have to do that, Katara. Really, I’m grateful, but you don’t. I don’t need a caretaker, and I don’t want to burden you with my problems. You have your own.”

“You wouldn’t.” Katara isn’t looking at him, but she smiles nonetheless. “Besides, worrying about you when I’m halfway across the world and can’t do anything about it is more of a burden than being here could ever be.”

“I don’t want-“

“This isn’t about what you _want,_ Zuko.” Katara’s eyes flash. “Someone has to make sure you have what you need.”

The world feels a little less hazy as she bends the water back into her waterskin and he smiles, genuinely this time. “You never fail to amaze me, Katara.”

“Idiot,” she scoffs.

(She means it as affectionately as she knows how.)

* * *

It’s midway through her second week in the Fire Nation that Katara begins to wonder what she’s doing here.

At first, Zuko seems happy to see her. He won’t say it, but he’s in pain, and his relief is evident once he’s healed. His infection cleared up, he’s a little less sallow, a little more energetic. He smiles when he catches Katara’s eyes across the room and her stomach turns delightedly at the way his eyes light up lock on hers. He hadn’t known she was coming and he grumbled, of course, at her hawklike vigilance, but he let her dress his wound and work on his heart (she’d given up on ever restoring its full strength months ago, when she’d first started to try, but she’s been studying in the intervening months and has new forms she wants to experiment with). He’s too weak to spar like he wishes they could, his heart still frail even seven months after the Agni Kai, but even so, they spend more time together than Katara would’ve though he had time for.

No doubt about it: Zuko had needed a friend almost as badly as he’d needed a healer and a good night of sleep. And the way he’s energized by Katara’s presence makes her feel like she’s floating.

But that glow fades with time, and now they sit across from each other, one at each end of table that could’ve spanned miles for all the distance it put between them. Katara’s head is bowed over the sea prunes she’d requested, homesick and wondering in some small way why she’s still here at all. He’s quiet, too, scanning a proposal he’d been given earlier; Katara knows better, by now, than to tell him to rest.

  
The first time he’d lashed out at her, it’d been because of this.

At first, Zuko had been willing to listen, take her advice, take better care of himself. But he’s grown more obstinate with time, and now, a month in, it’s as if nothing has changed; he’s working himself ragged, and there are dark circles beneath his eyes and it’s all she can do to get him to let her dress his wound. He insists he doesn’t need it but it’s the one thing that wide eyes and an imploring “ _please,_ Zuko” will usually get him to allow, albeit begrudgingly. He no longer seeks her out and when he does see her, all she gets is a curt nod.

It hurts. Katara knows she’s here to help him _and nothing else_ (she has to continually remind herself of that, for she’ll go crazy if she doesn’t), but it is so painful, in a way she doesn’t even want to think about, how he insists upon shutting her out. And when she doesn’t – when she pushes too far, as by gently reminding him that he’s got to take breaks as she had the first time she’d seen him reading at dinner – he snaps.

“I don’t need you _mothering_ me, Katara,” he’d snapped, and Katara had snapped back because he was so unbelievably _ungrateful,_ and it had all escalated until she’d stormed off to her quarters, too frustrated even to care that he’d have to make it back to his chambers on his own now. “He has servants for that,” she’d muttered to herself, bitterly realizing how much she felt like one when he’d never even asked for her help.

  
(She’d have died before admitting that she’d cried herself to sleep that night, clutching a pillow and wondering why, why, _why_ she was giving so much of herself to someone who didn’t even want it.)

So Katara’s learned: don’t push buttons, don’t get on his nerves. She’s learned to dodge his temper, how to give Zuko what he won’t admit he needs when he seems hell-bent on rejecting help. She wants to write to Iroh, ask how he managed Zuko’s mercurial temper, how he cared for a boy who hates being cared for so ardently; but she always finds a reason not to.

And now she sits before him in silence that does not break until he asks her opinion on a trade agreement with the Earth Kingdom. She hates the way her heart flutters joyfully at the way he’d seek out her opinion, that he’s even spoken to her at all, but it _does._ She smiles, looks up from her sea prunes, thinks for a moment and feels fit to burst with pride when her canny suggestion gets an appreciative half-smile out of Zuko.

“You’re good at this,” he murmurs, and later she’ll be ashamed of the way that insignificant praise makes all of the heartache and frustration she’s put herself through at his hand feel worthwhile.

But for now she smiles back and all she says is, “thank you.”

“Thank _you.”_ His smile reaches his eyes this time. “I don’t think I’ve told you lately how much I like having you around, Katara.”

If she was ready to burst earlier, she’s just about dead now. But what she blurts out – instead of _any_ response worthy of the joy she feels – is a very contemptuous “you sure have a funny way of showing it,” and his face falls like he’s been slapped.

  
“I know, Katara,” he admits, his voice pained.

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Hm. Wouldn’t have thought that.”

He folds his napkin, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Katara. I have to, uh…do a thing.”

“Oh.” Katara’s joy wanes and the frustration that’s been simmering in the pit of her stomach since their first fight takes over again. “You better go, then. Wouldn’t want to leave a _thing_ undone.”

She bursts into tears when she hears the door latch behind him.

* * *

It’s too hot to sleep, but Zuko figures that if he closes his eyes and lies there for long enough he’ll be lulled to sleep by his own exhaustion. After all, he’s never been more exhausted in his life – there’s no logical reason he _should_ be having such trouble sleeping. By all rights he should pass out the moment his head hits the pillow because life hasn’t let up in weeks. Even with Katara here – he cannot believe that, after two months, she’s _still_ in the Fire Nation, but he is endlessly grateful for it even if the primary emotion he shows her in thanks for her tireless work is thankless frustration – everything is overwhelming, there’s no end of things to do, and he, frankly, feels vastly underqualified to deal with any of it.

He wishes he had guidance, now more than ever. He wishes he had someone to hold him sometimes, someone to tell him he’d get through it, to fortify him with the grit he needs so badly and can’t seem to summon when everything around him seems so grey and dull and empty.

Truthfully, he knows he has that person already. And more than anything, he wants to tell her that. He wishes he could tell Katara how much he values her company, that he hates the way he’s been getting around her for no reason at all. He wishes he could beg her to stay when there’s nothing but him keeping her here and her patience for his ungratefulness is running short. He wishes he had the words to explain this – the grey that’s been coloring his days, the way the overwhelming task before him hangs like a millstone around his neck, the frustration he feels because he can’t even understand his own behavior, the helplessness, the anxiety, the sadness, the fact that a pair of sapphire eyes is the only color in a monochrome world-

  
But he just can’t do it.

  
He sees the way her shoulders slump under the weight of caring for a lost cause, and he can’t.

  
More than any of the dozens of things he wishes for, Zuko wishes he could tell Katara that he is sorry. But he wakes in the middle of the night to find her slumped over in a chair beside his bed, one hand on the bedspread to alert her if he moves so that she can force him to go back to sleep.

And he just can’t do it.

* * *

She’s dressing his wound when it all clicks into place.

Zuko doesn’t trust his physicians with his scar, for whatever reason; privately, Katara wonders if it’s because _she’s_ the reason he has it in the first place that she is the only one allowed to treat it. Regardless, that request of his is the reason that, every morning, she reapplies the bandages she _still_ insists upon wrapping around his chest (the scar’s nearly healed after over a year, of course, but she’s not about to let there be a repeat of the infection he’d had when she first arrived) before he starts his day’s work.

(Privately, she wonders if the reason she’s so protective of his scar – some would say excessively so – because she is its cause, because if he were to succumb to an infection, he would’ve been dying for and because of _her.)_

This is the one routine treatment he’s consented to: all of her attempts to get him to sleep earlier or rest more often have failed miserably, but he lets her dress his scar. So she does, and it is one early Autumn morning as she ties off the bandage and slips the knot between skin and dressing that it occurs to her why she is still, after three months and endless trials and endless heartaches, here with Zuko.

Her presence is the product of a tentative trust, warm arms wrapped around her as she shook with adrenaline and hot tears rolled down her cheeks at the thought of the man she’d spared. It’s the product of a flash of lightning and an improbable sacrifice and “thank you, Katara” and the weeks spent at the palace after that, the way she’d barely left his bedside and the way he’d held her hand as he drifted off each night as if to ask her to stay. It’s the product of the vast loneliness she’d felt after she’d returned home without even realizing why, and the way she’d worried when she’d learned of his poor health. It’s a product of the way that there is only one thing that those things can all mean.

She is here – came here, stayed here – because she loves Zuko with everything she has. 

Even before she knew it, even before he put every good thing she’d ever thought of him to the test, Katara loved Zuko.

Even now, as he proves to be so unbelievably _impossible,_ Katara loves Zuko.

Even after this, even after she’ll inevitably have to move on and go home and spend her life in a lackluster imitation of the one she wishes for, Katara will love Zuko.

She’s almost dumbstruck by the realization, and her hands freeze in place, one by her side and the other resting lightly atop the bandages crisscrossing his bare back. She can’t move and after a moment Zuko turns around, glancing at her confusedly.

“Everything all right?” he asks, and the way he sounds warm and casual and _normal_ makes Katara want to cry even more than she already does.

“Mm-hm,” she says absentmindedly, her hand still hovering in the air in front of her even though he’s moved away and she’s no longer touching him. She finds that she misses the warmth, though; she’s too dazed to tell herself not to be bold, and she moves her hand to rest against his chest where, underneath the meticulously-applied dressings, his skin is burnt into a starburst, a permanent reminder of the esteem he once held for her even if now he sees her as no more than a nagging annoyance.

(Zuko may not ever love her – he probably won’t, in truth – but he will always be the boy who nearly died for her, and Katara will never, _ever_ forget it.)

“Katara?”

“I’m, um. I’m sorry.” She clears her throat. “I just, uh…wanted to say to, um. Be careful out there, okay?”

She’s rewarded with a tiny smile and she swears it’s the sweetest sight she’s ever seen.

“I will, Katara,” he says, pressing his hand over hers where it rests against his chest before he gently sets it back down by her side to shrug on his robes. “Thank you.”

“Um…you’re welcome.” She doesn’t see the need to say it, not really, but she has to do _something_ about the terrifying wall of silence they’ll build in seconds if she doesn’t respond, so she says the first thing she can think of.

He leaves and a traitorous tremor of hope shakes her to the core.

* * *

“Hey, are you all right?”

  
Zuko glances up from the scroll he’s reviewing to find Katara watching him. Her face isn’t pinched and sad, as it usually has been lately; instead it’s open, concerned but warm and… _beautiful,_ he realizes. It’s strange, because he’s never really thought it before, but he wonders how he missed it: Katara is almost stunningly beautiful. 

“Me?” he asks, wishing he could slap his own brain for that one. There is no one else in the room, and suddenly, he is _very_ concerned about appearing stupid. “Um, sorry, of course you meant me, there’s…no one else here,” he mutters. “Um. Yeah. I’m okay, why?”

“You’re reading through dinner again,” she says gently.

“I always do, Katara. I don’t have time for breaks – you know that.”

“I’ve been trying not to mention it because, well, you always yell at me, but…” she trails off, playing with a lock of her hair. “You _really_ need to stop doing that, Zuko. This is the one time when you’re awake that you don’t have to be working. Why can’t you just rest?”

“Katara, _I don’t have time.”_ The awkwardness he felt is easier to channel into frustration than it is to think about, and that is what he does. “There is so much wrong with this world and I have to fix _all of it,_ and you want me to take _breaks?”_

“No one ever said you had to cure all the world’s problems by yourself, Zuko!” Katara snaps. She’s done being gentle, too, it seems. “You’re running yourself into the ground and I have tried _everything_ I could think of to get you to stop, but you’re never going to get better if you don’t-“

“There’s nothing wrong with me!”

“Zuko, have you _seen_ yourself?” Katara cries, her eyes welling up with hot, angry tears. “ _Heard_ yourself? You’re a _mess._ All you do is work and bottle up your feelings until you can’t anymore, and then you take them out on me for trying to help you, and-“

“Have _you_ ever been responsible for an entire country?” Zuko’s seeing red now and he doesn’t even know _why._ “Because I am, and it just so happens that that country has a hundred years’ worth of mistakes that I have to make up for, and I _can’t,_ Katara. I’m one person, and I _can’t._ And I’m tired all the time, and I’ve never felt so _weak_ before, and I’m so sick of all of it! I _hate_ this!” he’s breathing hard, now, and his words feel like a rampaging Komodo-rhino that he desperately wishes he could placate before it razed everything in its path, but he can’t stop. “And as if that isn’t enough, _you_ had to show up – _which I never asked you to do –_ and start breathing down my neck all the time!”

He’s never seen Katara look so _small_ before.

  
“You,” she spits, “are _unbelievable.”_

He’s too shocked at his own outburst to respond.

“You know what, Zuko? Fine.” Katara stands, throwing down her napkin. “Fine. I’ll leave, if that’s what you want. I’ll leave and never come back.” Tears swim in her eyes and they’re going to spill over any second. “I’ll leave you alone here in this palace with not a single person to turn to, and when you get sick again, I’m gonna say I told you so. I’m not going to keep putting my life on hold for someone who doesn’t even want my help.” She’s been avoiding eye contact, but now she meets his eyes and won’t waver. “Because I’m not going to keep letting you hurt me. Spirits, I feel like such a _fool.”_

“Katara, I-“

“I can’t believe I let myself fall in love with someone like _you.”_

She gives him one last withering look through moist eyes and turns to leave.

(That night, there’s something off about the flavor of his tea, and he shrugs it off as bad preparation until his vision starts to swim.

Her words are the last thing he hears in his mind before the world goes dark.)

* * *

 _“Please,_ Zuko.”

Katara leans her head against his chest in sheer exhaustion, and she’s not even trying to hide her tears anymore. She has done all she can against the poison in his veins; now she has to wait, and waiting is agony. “Please, _please_ live,” she murmurs, taking his limp hand in hers, resting her head against his chest just to feel that his heart’s still beating. “I’m sorry, Zuko. I’m sorry I got in your face and I’m sorry I said all those things and I’m sorry that we left things off like that and…” she sniffs, holding back tears. “I don’t care if you don’t love me, Zuko. I don’t even care if you hate me. I just need you to live.”

She has no more words after that, so she sits a silent vigil at his bedside.

When he wakes the next afternoon, she cries all over again.

“I’m so sorry, Zuko,” she murmurs, pulling away from his bedside because her touch is the last thing he wants to wake up to, she’s sure.

“No, _I_ am,” he tells her. “Katara…there’s no excuse for the things I said.”

  
“Zuko, it’s-“

“It isn’t fine, Katara.” He takes her hand and squeezes it and she’s so surprised that she nearly pulls away.

“We can talk about this later,” she concedes tiredly, and he mutely agrees.

* * *

Zuko waits five days for “later” to come, and it doesn’t.

He takes matters into his own hands.

Technically, he’s not supposed to be walking: the poison slipped into his tea to finish him off weakened his muscles, and with his heart as weak as it already is, he cannot afford to take risks. But _nothing_ is going to stop him from making this right.

No one asks why the Fire Lord is requesting a vase of fire lilies, and though it takes all he has not to drop the vase because walking across half the palace is hard enough unencumbered and his muscles are still so weak, he carries them as dutifully as their intended recipient has carried him all these months. His legs are shaky underneath him and he has to grab at objects, sometimes, to keep his balance, but he keeps on walking.

He thinks of the way the grey coloring his world has slowly started to fade, slowly erased by the careful strokes of her brush. He thinks of her eyes, her smile, her passion and anger and frustration. He thinks of what could’ve been the last words she’d said to him and his heart is beset with hope all over again, even though he’s got absolutely no proof that she won’t have changed her mind yet.

But most of all, he thinks of the way he treated her when she’d given up everything for him, and it is burning shame that drives him onwards, past guards who look at him strangely when he passes but don’t stop him, through the hallways.

(He curses himself for instructing the servants to give Katara _these_ quarters when they’re so inconveniently far from his, but he figures the difficulty of the journey is the penance he owes.)

By the time Zuko reaches Katara’s chambers, he’s embarrassingly out of breath, and dizzy, and his knees feel like they’ll give out at any second, but he musters one last ounce of strength to knock at her door. She opens it promptly, clad in a white silk nightgown with loose hair; she is a vision, and he thinks he might faint at the sight of her even if he weren’t about to anyways. He holds out the vase of fire lilies without saying a word and she takes them.

  
“Zuko, why…” she trails off. “Wait. You’re not supposed to be walking!”

“Katara, I couldn’t wait any longer,” he pants, following her back into her room and collapsing against the door when it shuts behind him. “I…I needed…”

“Sit down,” she orders, grabbing his arm and trying to pull her to the armchair that sits in one corner of the room, but he waves her off. He needs to do this standing.

“Katara, I messed up.” He’s finally caught his breath, at least, even though he still feels wobbly. “I have absolutely no excuse for the way I treated you and even if I can’t ever make it up to you-“ the floor feels like it’s spinning beneath him – “I need…I need…”

His knees finally give way and Katara rushes to his side, catching him as best she can. She tries to haul him onto the bed so he can sit but he waves her off again, moving so he can kneel – supplicant’s posture, as seems appropriate. This time, though, she doesn’t take no for an answer, and she lifts him to the bed, almost entirely supporting his weight.

“Zuko, stop this,” she says, her eyes brimming with tears. “Stop trying to prove yourself. You’re going to make it-“

“I just want you to know that I _get it.”_ He squeezes his eyes shut as if it’ll push out the shame he feels. “I know why I was wrong now. You put your whole life on hold to help me and I…I was a total jerk.” He laughs bitterly. “That’s the understatement of the year.”

“Yeah, you were,” she agrees. “And I was mad. Believe me, I was _steaming_ after dinner that night.” She doesn’t have to specify which one. “But…almost losing you made me…think. And I realized that the person you were acting like wasn’t _you.”_

“That doesn’t excuse anything.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Katara says gently, “but you just walked across half the palace to apologize to me when you were supposed to be in bed. If that doesn’t show me you were sorry, I don’t know what would.”

“But-“

“And there’s something else I didn’t tell you.” Katara plays with the comforter, twisting a piece of its fabric between her fingers. “In that letter your uncle wrote me, he didn’t just talk about your health.”

“Oh?”

“He told me that you’d been acting off, too,” she says. “Like…your old self, short-tempered and inconsiderate. Not like the person you are now. And he suspected there was something really wrong.” Katara takes his hands and suddenly the world is _bright_ again. “And there was, Zuko. I know that. I don’t know what, but your heart and mind were as unhealthy as your body.”

“They were,” he admits. “I felt like…like I had this dark cloud following me everywhere.”

“If I didn’t know there was something wrong – if I thought you were just being a jerk because you could – I’d have left within days, Zuko.” Katara still hasn’t let go of his hands and she’s rubbing circles with her thumbs there now. “But I didn’t. Because I knew you needed someone to be there with you.”

“I did,” he admits, and it feels like a weight off. “I acted like I resented you being there, but…I needed that.” His cheeks flush. “I needed _you.”_

“I’m sorry, too,” she murmurs at that.

  
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Katara.”

“Yes, I did, Zuko.”

“But-“

“I’m sorry for what I said the night you got poisoned.”

“You mean that…that you were in love with me?” it makes him half-delirious with joy just to say it. “Why would you be _sorry_ about that?”

“Because I _can_ believe that I’d fall for someone like you.”

He’s incredulous for a moment, until her face lights up and without even thinking about it, he’s leaning in and kissing her, so gentle it’s barely there, and when he pulls back she’s laughing and crying and she throws her arms around his shoulders, forgetting that he’s too weak to hold her weight. He grunts in surprise as they collapse back against the pillows, but he’s laughing, too, even as an adorably shocked expression flashes across her face and she apologizes profusely for forgetting.

“No, don’t,” he laughs, holding her as tightly as he has the strength to. He’s wanted to be held like this for months now and he could not be more glad that it’s her.

The grey in his sky is burned off by the heat of daylight now, and all he sees is blue.


End file.
